They were permitted, and even encouraged to converse with each other,

for the directors very properly judged that anything that conduced to

variations of mood made for pleasing fluctuations in their patterning;

and Elizabeth was almost forced to hear the stories of these lives with

which her own interwove: garbled and distorted they were by vanity

indeed and yet comprehensible enough. And soon she began to appreciate

the small spites and cliques, the little misunderstandings and alliances

that enmeshed about her. One woman was excessively garrulous and

descriptive about a wonderful son of hers; another had cultivated a

foolish coarseness of speech, that she seemed to regard as the wittiest

expression of originality conceivable; a third mused for ever on dress,

and whispered to Elizabeth how she saved her pence day after day, and

would presently have a glorious day of freedom, wearing ... and then

followed hours of description; two others sat always together, and

called one another pet names, until one day some little thing happened,

and they sat apart, blind and deaf as it seemed to one another's being.

And always from them all came an incessant tap, tap, tap, tap, and the

manageress listened always to the rhythm to mark if one fell away. Tap,

tap, tap, tap: so their days passed, so their lives must pass. Elizabeth

sat among them, kindly and quiet, grey-hearted, marvelling at Fate: tap,

tap, tap; tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap.

So there came to Denton and Elizabeth a long succession of laborious

days, that hardened their hands, wove strange threads of some new and

sterner substance into the soft prettiness of their lives, and drew

211

Tales of Space and Time